When I tell a joke, I immediately know whether it's funny or not.
I think you're born with a comedy gene, and you can't teach timing, and you can't teach satire, pathos.
A fellow who has a funny bone can learn to hone his skills, but I don't think you can develop a funny bone - you either have it or you don't. And by the way - when you get it, we don't know it.
I don't need somebody behind a desk to tell me what a marketing survey says is funny. I got 3 million miles and 70,000 tickets sold, telling me that I know how to make people laugh.
I don't think you can teach people how to be funny. You can make suggestions about how to speak a line or get a laugh, but it has to be in them.
You can take lessons to become almost anything: flying lessons, piano lessons, skydiving lessons, acting lessons, race car driving lessons, singing lessons. But there's no class for comedy. You have to be born with it. God has to give you this gift.
I know what's funny, and I probably know the best way to deliver the joke. Whether it's walking out of a room, facing that way, facing this way. I just have a sense of that.
And, you know, I liked writing humor. Well, I should say, I wanted to write seriously, but it kept turning funny.
People always say, when did you realize you were funny? And I think it's not that you realize you were funny. It's that you're brain works in a certain way. And I don't think that that's - I think in some respects it's uncontrollable, and you can either accept it and deal with it and hone it or you can try to fight it. And I was too weak to fight it.
I have this natural thing in my head that when I sit down to write something serious, I tend to make jokes. I can't help it. I can't help but desire for the narrative to be as complicated and as truthful as possible. That's just the way my head works.
I'm always in situations where you can't be funny, and yet I want to do it anyway.
I don't think comedy is something you learn. I think it's something that's either there or it's not. When I read a script, I have to see the funny, and if I can see it's funny, it helps me to be able to transmit that.
